NHL Betting Against the Public 2005-2011

Betting Against the Public in the NHL (2005-2011)

The 2010-11 NHL Season is starting and Sports Insights’ researchers are pleased to update our popular series of “Betting Against the Public” articles to help our Sports Insights Members< improve their hockey results. Although hockey is not a hugely popular sport, many sports investors are excited to have the NHL season begin. The NHL offers many profit opportunities — with many teams playing many games — from October through late spring.

Sports Insights is pleased that betting against the public in the NHL continues to perform well. The information on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Use of this information in violation of any federal, state, or local laws is prohibited.

Sports Insights Database and NHL Research

Sports Insights (SIs) has collected betting data for every major U.S. sport since the 2003. We collect the opening and closing lines (and “line movement,” for various sportsbooks) as well as final scores — and perhaps most importantly, SIs’ proprietary “betting percentages,” Our research team also “cleans” our data — to ensure our historical data is useful for our research articles and our Members. Sports Insights’ historical database for each sport is an important part of our research and value-added for our Members. It is the backbone for our contrarian sports investing methods and you can’t find this kind of data and information anywhere else!

Our database and contrarian methods are backed by tens of thousands of games across every major U.S. sport. The NHL instituted some major rules after the strike (the 2003-04 season which was lost to the NHL strike). Most notable for hockey fans and bettors: overtime and the “shootout” have eliminated “ties.” This led to the elimination of the 0.5 goal spreads and made the NHL a “pure moneyline” sport like baseball. The hockey data for this article includes:

Six seasons (2005-2011) worth of data.

Includes playoff games; Excludes preseason games.

About 8,000 NHL games.

Betting System Ideas

Over the years, Sports Insights has shown that “Betting Against the Public” can help give you an edge. In previous years, we mentioned a filter to focus on a “narrower range of odds” — but with additional data, we now list results for the entire database. Please visit our recap of academic studies on sports betting on the NHL and other sports as well as on football. Below are some other thoughts on betting system development. Sports Insights’ team of analysts and researchers use these methods and more to bring our Members valuable sports handicapping information.

Use as much data as possible. As we have seen, you can never have enough data points.

Even more importantly, make sure the data is as “clean” as possible. This means that it should be complete, error-free, and consistent.

Try to use systems and parameters that make logical sense. Sports investing is a “competitive” environment and it is difficult to squeeze out profit margins consistently.

Cautiousness during every step of the system development process will help minimize curve-fitting and hopefully produce positive results in the future.

When studying a system, try to maximize the number of games or data points it encompasses. This will help generalize the system and add statistical confidence to what you are researching.

Fewer parameters are better than more parameters. This will improve the information in your systems, and ultimately, its reliability going forward.

Thoughts on the NHL

Because the NHL is not a very popular sport, some believe that a larger percentage of NHL sports bettors are professionals or “smart money.”

The amount of money flow from “the Public” versus “professional sports gamblers” is key to the market action and line movement in every sport and every type of sports bet. For instance, we believe that there are more “Pros” betting on “Totals.”

Knowing the type of bettor and potential money flow sources can help you to evaluate betting system approaches.

Betting Against the Public – NHL

“Betting Against the Public” is a contrarian approach that can help investors identify “value.” The table below displays the “units won” as well as a “return on investment” type of number for a range of “betting percentages.”

Table 1: NHL and Betting Against the Public (2005-2011)

Betting %

Units W/L

ROI

Win %

Num Games

< 50%

55.5

0.7%

44.3%

7,695

< 45%

85.8

1.4%

43.3%

6,165

< 40%

75.8

1.6%

42.0%

4,683

< 35%

118.8

3.6%

41.4%

3,281

Summary and Notes about the NHL “Bet Against the Public” Results

Results for Sports Insights’ betting percentages continue to post profitable results for the NHL — and across all major U.S. sports.

The units earned, especially in the “<35% bet against” and “< 40% range” results in fewer plays and a higher ROI (“return on investment”).

Results for Visiting teams that the “public hates” are better than for Home teams, suggesting that Visiting teams are undervalued more than Home teams in the NHL.

We do not guarantee that the trends and biases we’ve found will continue to exist. It is impossible to predict the future. Any serious academic research in the field of “market efficiencies” recognizes that inefficiencies may disappear over time. Once inefficiencies are discovered, it is only a matter of time before the market corrects itself. We do not guarantee our data is error-free. However, we’ve tried our best to make sure every score and percentage is correct.